The Lost Boy

by Angela Carlton

They were fragile people living on a dead end street and the lost boy was one of them. He began to run the summer after his mother died in a head-on collision. The lost boy ran through emerald green parks. He ran, ran all over the town like a crazed, wild dog, running by the waterfall embracing mother nature’s mystical allure. He ran with the strength his father told him was pinned-up, all the junk buried inside, teary, until he felt the weight of the shock melting away. Everything he’d carried on his shoulders seemed to lift as he made it another mile pushing-pushing-pushing until he became a stronger, better version of the lost boy before.

6S

Angela Carlton's fiction has been published in Every Writer, Everyday Fiction, Pedestal Magazine, 6S, 50-Word Stories, Spillwords Press and Friday Flash Fiction. “A Jigsaw Life,” a collection of stories, was released in 2022. In 2023, her story “Swallowed” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. See more on Facebook.